Infinite
by Acey Dearest
Summary: What another lacks might be impossible to make up for. Bura and Juunanagou romance. Chapter three uploaded. Don't worry, still in-progress.
1. Prologue

"Infinite" by Acey  
  
Disclaimer: I'll say this once and once alone. DBZ is the property of Mr. Toriyama and other people and companies. It's not mine. This is going to go for all chapters.  
  
Author's Note: Yeah, a Juunanagou/Bura fic from one of the last Juunanagou angsters still writing fics. Hey, at least it's not a Bulma/Vegeta, eh?  
  
"I can't wait forever, even though you want me to.... time won't let me." -Miscellaneous 1960's tune  
  
  
Bura at five years of age was about the same as Bura graduated from high school in a few mild respects. The doting father was still there, same as ever to her. She had never known Vegeta as he had been in his prime, and for that she ought to have felt lucky. Her memories of him were always of him bending, ever bending to her supreme will as his only daughter, taking her to the mall as a child, allowing her to wear immodest clothing in her midteens. Even his hair was under her rule-- at around sixteen or so she'd complained about his mustache and he, the proud, arrogant Prince of Saiyans, who never would submit to anyone's orders of his own free will-- had removed it for his daughter. She had the world wrapped around her little finger from birth, not only in the power to control her father but in every other aspect of life, more wealth than a third-world country at her disposal, her mother's good features and her father's obstinance. Yes, Bura's was a charmed life and doubtless would only grow more charming.  
Her much-older brother had envied her for that, before he grew up and became a corporate businessman as doubtless was appreciated. He had been twelve or so when she was born, a junior-high schooler, hormones starting to fluctuate, his interest in training beginning to waver; his interest starting to turn to the opposite sex. He had not expected her arrival, thinking himself happily fated to being an only child. Upon realizing it to be true he'd winced, deciding that if a sibling had to come it must be a boy-- had to be a boy-- but even that hope was shattered when the rest of his family went to the hospital after the baby was born and the nurse had said condescendingly:  
"Oh, now don't you worry, sweetheart, your Mommy's fine. You've got a little sister!"  
Don't you worry... that tone was so phony and sweetened it could have caught flies. Don't you worry-- when four years earlier he had looked at terror straight in the face, watched helpless as his best friend's mother was murdered at the hands of an insane monster, watched as...  
Don't you worry.   
He had gotten to hold her that day, and reluctantly did, glancing back at her every few seconds to make sure she hadn't tried to spit up on him as he asked his mother her name.  
"Bura."  
He smirked for a second. His mother had thought up a name worse than his, finally. Neither parent seemed to notice.  
"That's nice." Third highest grade in English and "that's nice" were the only words he could come up with. Bulma wearily hoped jealousy would not become an issue.  
"I think so, too."  
  
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Over time, Trunks' opinion of Bura did not really change. Instead, it slipped to the back of his mind, coming back to haunt him when he came down for breakfast during the holidays when he was in college, or, later, before he went to business meetings. She was there, ever-present, unavoidably the center of attention and the center of his father's affections. Her blue hair was always straight, eyes shiny with some anticipation, perhaps on how she was going to manipulate her father that day. He knew better than to suppose he and Bura were close. But when he asked for someone to pass the butter for his pancakes, or juice for his glass, the girl was there, not so consumed in her own thoughts as to forget him-- when their relationship was looked at from that perspective it wasn't very bad at all. Certainly better than siblings that argued constantly, anyway.   
The rest of the world's opinion of her had not changed either, but its opinion had been a more pleasant one, anyway, and was the one Bura noticed most. By the time she had graduated from high school he was thirty years old and, for all practical intents and purposes, running the Capsule Corporation with a fairly steady, albeit monopolizing, hand and had no time to dwell on petty resent. This suited her well. Bura was content with her image to the masses of the sweet, cherished heiress, although she had no idea how this would bode for her in another few years. But for now, the summer after high school graduation, it was fine. She was young, popular, never to be without friends, never to be alone. All she had wanted she had gotten-- her parents' affection, more dolls as a child than she had ever been able to look at, boyfriends when she reached adolescence. Nothing had been denied her in the eighteen years of her existance, and, more than likely, nothing would. Bura was spoiled by everyone she came into contact with. Had it not been for him that fact would never have changed.  
Bura loved him that summer after her high school graduation, loved him with more than the trivial love she used with her parents when she wanted something, more than any other boy she'd held hands with in infatuation. She had never held hands with him.  
Juunanagou was his name. The losses he sustained before the one we are about to discuss in detail are mainly because of his own failings, but this one, possibly, does not rest on him. That summer was her first departure from the childish shallowness of her life and led her for a little while to sympathy toward another. For her adolescence would end.  
For the one she loved that summer, adolescence was eternal. 


	2. Sunlight

"Eternity"  
  
by Acey  
  
Author's Note: For those of you that didn't find my note in my profile page, I couldn't update because my computer of eight years (well, my parents' computer) finally died. Luckily, my daddy let me use his laptop from work, and though all my files from the old computer are dead I decided that I couldn't not try to update something (right now I don't have the patience to rewrite that 2,000 words+ final chapter of "Letters" that was almost finished). So, I hope you enjoy this chapter.  
  
"... the dice was loaded from the start..." -"Juliet," Dire Straits  
  
It was hot that summer, a miserable heat that practically threatened to singe one's hair as they walked out into it, a heat that alarmed some of the weather forecasters and annoyed everyone else. Bura took special care to avoid the sun's rays on the warmest days, shallowly feeling that a nice tan was not worth going out for when it involved blisters. Trunks teased her about that, saying that maybe she should go and borrow a hat from Marron instead of sulking around the house and yelling at everyone outside about sunburns.  
  
"That's easy for you to say. You go borrow it."  
  
Trunks grinned. For a moment he looked changed, different. The glasses did not fit him when he smiled-- they looked wrong, meant for someone else's poor vision and not his own. The smile mocked the cold sternness of his businessman's attire, mocked everything about his orderly manner and world. Then the smile disappeared and the glasses and clothing fit again.  
  
"I can't, not right now. I have a meeting."  
  
"You're always at meetings." Bura scrunched her face up to resemble Bulma's, though the illusion was easy enough to sustain. "You should go other places, Trunks, go have some fun, maybe you could meet a nice girl..."  
  
"Someone has to look after the company. Mom won't be around forever. You shouldn't play around so much, maybe if you actually--" He glanced at his watch, more as a means of ending the conversation than anything else. "I have to go."  
  
"Have fun and meet a nice girl while you're there!" she said in a singsong, and he absentmindedly glared at her, mind on paperwork and budget deficiencies now and only to a small extent on his sister. Trunks turned a corner in the house and was gone.  
  
*************************************************************************  
  
Bura found her mother at a computer, typing endless commands into it, her fingers a blur on the keys. Bura had had a few keyboarding classes in high school but never made much use of them, and watched Bulma type with interest as her deft hands moved across the keys with rare backspaces.  
  
"What're you doing, Mom?" she asked, making nothing out of the gibberish she put into the screen, words that didn't mean a thing in any spoken language, words that thus didn't mean a thing to Bura.  
  
"Programming for some of the machines. It isn't too difficult, to be honest, as long as you know what you're doing."  
  
She nodded, uninterested.  
  
"So, how are you, Miss High School Graduate? Now both of you are out of there-- I feel old."   
  
Bura's response was annoyed.  
  
"Mom." It escaped her why Bulma said that every chance she got. Bura felt that if you were in fact aging that there was no point in bringing it up and waving it around like a flag. It made you look old. She scrutinized her mother's face, eying the wrinkles around her mouth and forehead. Bulma had kept herself up well, no one would guess the age she was nearing. As Bura thought this a disturbing picture came to mind, of her, Bura, sitting at a computer some forty or fifty years hence, looking exactly like her mother did now-- or worse, sitting around in a gargantuan room of the Capsule Corporation, staring at faded, beautiful pictures of herself from years ago in has-been movie star fashion. She put the thought from her vain mind immediately. That would not happen for decades.  
  
Bulma saw the look and acknowledged it.  
  
"So you agree with me! Some daughter you are," she said jokingly, without a pause in typing. "I'll remember that look when I write my will."  
  
The humor was lost on Bura.  
  
"Mom."  
  
"Oh, Bura. Why don't you go outside?" she asked, turning from her work to look out the window. "It looks like it's going to be a nice day."  
  
"Mom, it's hot. Haven't you been out?"  
  
"The sun never bothered me too much when I was your age."  
  
"I don't want to go out and lay on the beach when it's practically a hundred degreesin the shade."  
  
"I didn't say you had to. Just drive around a bit, go over to the mall-- something like that. Unless you'd like to spend the day learning how to program machines..."  
  
Even now, her mother treated her like a child. It was as if she couldn't see Bura beyond the age of six, or else, refused to see it. Bura was the little girl with her hair in a ponytail, wearing red and enthusiastically cheering on her friends at tournaments, and then at home, playing with dolls, usually with some playmate or relative. The dolls had changed to cars, but that was a difference Bulma could handle.  
  
"Fine. Bye, Mom."  
  
"Bye, honey."  
  
*************************************************************************  
  
She went outside and threw a capsule on the ground, watching as it burst and revealed a scarlet convertible. Bura had decided to go along with her mother's advice and head toward the mall after stopping at Pan's for a little while.  
  
Bura's friendship with Pan was more of one made from convenience than anything else. Their families had known each other since before either of them was born, even before Pan's father was born. Bulma had gone on escapades with Pan's grandfather as a teenager, searching for magical dragonballs that were supposed to grant wishes. After that neither of them had entirely gone their separate ways, though it was highly doubtful that the families would merge. That would likely be no more than a total embarassment for Vegeta and a full removal of the engaged son or daughter's inheritance, or so he had intimated when Bura had had a crush on Goten when she was ten years old.  
  
Pan and Bura's personalities clashed too much to be best friends, even when they were only four and six. But they were close enough that each could go to the other's house without question, and trusted each other to a decent degree. Privately they annoyed each other with their unconsious quirks, Pan's instilled want to spar conflicting badly with Bura's need to shop. Bura only thought of how they differed completely once she got over to her house.  
  
She turned in the road, going toward the house. A few minutes later Bura had made it over there and rang the doorbell. Pan's presence at the other side of the door was obvious immediately as she opened it spiritedly.  
  
"Bura! Come in!"  
  
She did so.  
  
"Hi, Pan," she said, idly glancing at the bandana on the other girl's hair, the boots and backpack, wondering when Pan was going to grow up. Wearing things like that was passable, even cute as a little kid, but Pan was sixteen years old, for crying out loud. Someday Bura wouldforce her to get some new clothes.  
  
"How're you?" Pan said, remembering what remained of manners.  
  
"Very hot. Mom made me get out of the house."  
  
If Pan had heard the note of annoyance in Bura's voice she did not mention it.  
  
"My mom usually has to make me stay inside." she said.   
  
"I know."  
  
"But you can't fight very well indoors. I thought Mom would know that since she used to be a fighter herself, but no." She sighed. "It's not like I'm going to be eaten by a dinosaur out in the woods. That's more of something for Uncle Goten's girlfriend to do."  
  
Bura was interested.  
  
"Paresu?"  
  
Pan nodded, refixing the orange bandana on the top of her head.  
  
"Yeah. I don't really like her. He's been going out with her for two years now, so I guess there's nothing I can do about it."  
  
Bura had met Paresu twice and had gotten the sense that the girl was more naive than anyone she had met in her life.  
  
"She was the one who didn't know what ice cream was, right?"  
  
"Yeah. Or a hamburger."  
  
"Well, at least--" Bura paused, looking over Pan again.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Where did you get that bandana, anyway?"  
  
"Bura? We were talking about Paresu, not my bandana!"  
  
"I know. I was just wondering, you've worn it for years but I never knew where you got it."  
  
Pan, used to attacks for her fashion sense from Bura, replied,"I like my bandana!"  
  
"I know, but where did you get it?"   
  
"Oh," said Pan, mollified. "I got it from this guy. I was on my way to Grandpa's house to train when he saw me. He kind of glared at me; he didn't like me being there. He didn't say anything at first, just kind of stared-- he had a creepy stare. I thought he was some psycho, but he just asked me if I was related to Goku. I told him yes and he threw his bandana to me and said to ask Goku if he remembered him. Or maybe it."  
  
Bura was intrigued. She pulled her headband back before asking,"Did he?"  
  
Pan shook her head.  
  
"I didn't remember his name. Grandpa didn't recognize the bandana so I decided that I might as well wear it. It covers up my haircut."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Yeah." Pan's mind had reverted to the topic of her uncle's girfriend. "Paresu didn't know what a spa was until Uncle Goten took her to one for Valentine's Day last spring..."  
  
************************************************************************* 


	3. Shadows

"Infinite"  
  
by Acey  
  
He was standing there as she said goodbye to Pan, a lithe figure underneath a tree, concealed in the shadows with a past he could not remember and a present he hated, no matter how he intimated otherwise. He was there when she walked outside, throwing down her capsule in the grass, idly admiring the sheen of the vermillion automobile as he glanced at it. And there he remained for some time as she disappeared from all views but his own, watching, waiting.   
  
At long last he strode away from his hiding place, if only to show whatever passerby was there that he was not merely a mirage of the shadows but real, and had substance, even if that substance was bitter to the tastes of the decent, unpalatable to those of the righteous. For rare are the righteous who can look upon those tainted vilely without a mixture of anger and pity, and the only righteous who can bear the world day by day are the ones who ignore it. He was clearly a man of the world, one to be shied away from.  
  
The usual discrepancies can be brought about, of course. Few were the people that could really call him evil, for the antihero would be the villian outright if there was no decency in him. But this man had played the part of villian twice in thirty years, giving even the gullible reason to doubt.  
  
He walked away, sharp eyes following her, tracing out within his mind where she was headed, even though her car had long since passed. His tread was light, easy on the ground, like that of a cat's. After less than a minute of this his feet stopped touching the ground entirely and he floated upwards in flight, past the trees as though he were trying to touch the sun. No, he was going somewhere, toward Bura, for no real reason at all.  
  
She had been pretty enough, a dead look-alike for Bulma, the memory of which Gero had implanted in his brain. More than likely she was her daughter. Her expression had been a sulky one, tired of the sun's heat on her back, even as she waved her goodbyes to her friend, driving away like a racer.  
  
Humanity instantly stereotyped the teenager as a brat. So did Juunanagou.  
  
Still, there was something vague about her that interested him, the sheer shallowness of her character, surprising. He had never known of anyone with that one trait so prevalent. Her brother (for Trunks had to be her brother, if Bulma was her mother) had never been like that, the one that he remembered, the one doomed to inherit a terror-filled world, losing his birthright to a pair of half-machines. But that Trunks was gone now, back in the future that had he any sense of decency about him would have stayed in, in Juunanagou's perspective. The Trunks now was only a baby when Juunanagou first recalled him. He would have to be around his early thirties by now.  
  
He was digressing. At any rate, he highly doubted that even the Trunks of the present-day was very much similar to his sister on watching her alone. Too much of the same abominable trait was evident on her face, as the holes are all too visible on a piece of pumice, enabling it to float, and enabling her to stand out from the crowd, a regular "look at me, notice me" apparent on her face, utterly devoid of depth. You could tell that with some people, and this girl seemed to be one of them.  
  
The cyborg thought, and in an instant a wry, half-smile appeared on his face, a twisted smile, a deviating smile. For he had deviated often during the decades, one thing that he did not have the wisdom to regret nor thought worth regretting. It had gotten him into all his recollected troubles and yet he proceeded, like a raccoon with its paw caught in a trap that refuses to let go of the object that caught him there and would free him.   
  
Fate's hand is cruel to those who mock her.   
  
Juunanagou would have troubles here as well.  
  
***********************************************************************  
  
He eventually found his way to her car, that automaton he had always most enjoyed out of all human gadgets. He had personal preferences in cars, though no real justification for them and little knowledge of the automobile industry's best models. Juunanagou loved the cars that were the fastest, the sleek ones that rode on the road like proud horses in chariot races, overtaking the slow and the wary with ease, letting them swallow the dust behind in mouthfuls as they pushed ahead. There was a feeling of adrenaline in that, a rush of energy, pure, unadulterated by the cybernetics in him that threatened daily to overcome him. He was in control when he was behind the wheel of a car, dominating, afraid of no one at all.  
  
He had heard a borderline ancient saying once that God was an Englishman. He had never understood this until he read somewhere that the English had ruled the better half of the world at one point in time, a point long ago that was remembered by historians and students cramming for tests only. Juunanagou had ignored the saying then but realized at that second as he flew down to her vermillion automobile that the British must have felt as he did when inside a car, turning the steering wheel, determining where it went as they must have determined what happened to whole countries.  
  
Juunanagou advanced upon her, and she saw him, flying up to her car. At first her reaction was one of surprise as a wondering of what he was doing there crossed her mind. Bura did not recognize him-- she could not recognize him.  
  
The fact that the person was flying was suprise enough. Far more was the sudden realization that he was following her as well.  
  
Bura sped on, swerving around, attempting to get him off track. SHe doubted he could go faster than a car, anyway, and so only increased the speed a half-dozen more miles per hour, unthinking, unfazed. Bura glanced back after a few minutes, deciding that if the man remained after that she would become worried. For the present, the dense part of her let her pay him no mind whatsoever.  
  
The azure-haired girl looked back, suddenly noticed him still there in her rearview mirror and he saw her crimson boot press the gas pedal, nearly breaking it. Her face was not visible to him, but he could well imagine the look of horror and terror on her face, the face of one spoiled by all that life has to offer, now scared, now fearful. She turned repeatedly, desparately, dodging through other people in their own cars and pedestrians attempting to cross the street, trying to get him away, make him lose track of her. Her car skidded around for several minutes, as she broke every driving rule ever enforced by law in an attempt to get away from him.  
  
A sudden idea caused him to grin in spite of himself as he descended closer, taking care not to overtake her. He acted upon it and stuck his right thumb up from his fist, the sign of a hitchhiker. The girl in response pressed the acceleration further, harder. She turned on empty roads in an attempt to lose him, detours, seeing but not noticing as the car went from the city to the suburbs to the rural areas once again that she had left.  
  
She made a turn into a dead end, and could only watch as he came at last upon her, as he landed gently on the ground. Bura immediately locked all the doors, common sense not yet depleted, as she sat still, waiting for whatever he would do.  
  
'Wait.'  
  
For crying out loud, she thought, annoyed. Who was she the daughter of, anyway? Were her parents cowards, to shiver at whatever seemed more powerful than they? Had they taught her to be like that?   
  
Bura straightened herself in her seat, bravado replacing fear. If that man was going to do anything, she would put up a fight. She had Saiyan blood in her; despite never have bothering training past basic ki blasts and flight, that was still a threat in itself. Or, at least, she hoped it was. Bura wasn't sure, and to not be sure might mean her death.  
  
She rolled down the window impulsively, tried to put on a brave face. He responded with a smile, the same smile that he had used during the chase, a smile of incorrigable enjoyment, interest. This was a new thing to him, something that he had not expected from the girl, with her too-revealing clothes, skintight like an M.T.V. singer's. He hadn't thought she had mettle enough to even do that one action, to roll the window down to see her antagonist.  
  
"What do you want?!" Her voice was a brave attempt at fiery, at impassioned. Juunanagou instantly saw through it and rested his hand on the outside mirror of the car, his attention seemingly on other matters.  
  
"Tell me!" She struggled for a threat. "Don't you know who I am? My grandfather invented the capsule!"  
  
His eyes met hers for a second, then flickered away, as Bura noticed the gleam in them, achingly realizing it wasn't for her.  
  
Juunanagou turned away, smirking, coal-colored hair shining in the afternoon sun. At last he spoke, softly, with a rough edge slicing through each word like a blade.  
  
"He ought to have invested his time in other matters. If he had then maybe you wouldn't be such a waste of breath."  
  
Thus saying, he began to walk away.  
  
"But-- you're going-- hey, what--?"  
  
Her sentences came out as embarassed fragments, red face proving her feeling of insult. He turned around again and stopped.  
  
"Did you want me to kidnap you, kill you? Worse? You aren't worth the effort. I realized that as you nearly hit that poor old pedestrian near the highway. But it was fun. That I can admit."  
  
"Hey! Why, you--"  
  
His laughter pealed in the distance as his steps faded into the forest.  
  
"Don't worry, you're in quite good company. By the standards set I'm not worth my breath either."  
  
And so he left her, left her to recapsulize the miraculously undamaged car and go to the road, to return home. 


	4. Chill

"Infinite"  
  
by Acey  
  
Note: Seriously, I ought to start a fanlisting for They Who Don't Update. Get me more hits for my site, at least... thanks for everyone's continued interest in this fic. I appreciate it more than you realize. ;;  
  
Dreamwraith: Yes, it was Juunanagou's.  
  
She was more cautious on her way home, looking back every few seconds to make certain he wasn't there, following her again. The bravado she had displayed while the man had been at her side, chasing her had been long since depleted. Bura touched her hand in an unconscious motion to her forehead, feeling the drops of sweat trickle off, and wincing.  
  
It could have very well been worse, and the girl realized that somewhere in her mind, that dense fabrication of thoughts and memories that served its purpose beneath the outward loveliness of her face. She grimaced at the possibilities and mental images this gave her, of rape, of various ways to murder her, a knife slitting through her white neck, his gun firing just once into her skull. One bullet would have been all it would have took if he were a good marksman-- and she had seen the gun in his pocket when he had flown above the car, a casual reminder of that Death that took its own indiscriminately and without regards to class or purity of heart or beauty or any of the crucial variables that mattered everywhere else. Death on his pale horse.  
  
That was in the Bible somewhere, wasn't it? Bura shrugged at the thought, suddenly remembering a transfer student in about seventh grade at her junior high school that was pious to the point of it being laughable to her and nine-tenths of her class, always muttering for some reason about the apocalypse and a harlot who was Babylon, looking directly at the blue-haired girl as she said it. She'd bristled at that, but no more, for around that time she had begun to attain admirers and accept the dates of the suave, while boldly and unkindly declining the stuttering ones with their stares at the floor when they asked the time-honored question of whether they would go out with her.  
  
"Um, no."  
  
She had left the apology out because she felt no need for it. An apology admitted there was something wrong, not with them but with her, and that was one thing she could not allow for no matter what courtesy called for. The fault had been theirs; had to have been theirs. The boys ought to have realized from the beginning that their invitation was to be denied, and, avoiding the pain of rejection, perhaps left their dreams to become reality for someone else.  
  
Quickly the road turned back into a pathway that would put Spaghetti Junction to shame, and at this sign of mankind Bura stopped her musings and begun again to pay attention to the road ahead of her, still half-expecting the dark-haired stalker to come back for her, undefered by the traffic, pace quickened to stay himself from a grim fate at the hands of an automobile. But Bura would have almost taken a perverse pleasure in such a demise, once the shock of the man following her as he had, chasing her as he had completely wore off and became fiery anger.  
  
Not then, though. The manicured fingernails reached for no compact today, using the mirror meant for viewing other cars to judge if her makeup was correctly placed upon her face, if it looked natural, if it set her to the perfection of a model. Today those hands grasped the steering wheel like a man in a adventure movie hanging for dear life onto the edge of the cliff holds to the edge, knowing how vital it was, knowing that if he let go he would fall to his death, screaming the whole way down.  
  
'I want to go home. I know I haven't really ever wanted to at any other time in my life but I want to go home, right now-- right now--'  
  
Right now to her father that would do anything and everything that she wanted, to her brilliant, collected mother, even to Trunks right down to his heavy glasses and business suit, Trunks her brother, thirty going on fifty in her mind--  
  
The familiar dome-shaped building came into view, the cream-colored thing of imagination she had called an igloo as a child, with its honeybee nest of knowledge and comfort and home, all home, old sign now not even needing to be there but remaining, in capital letters: "CAPSULE CORPORATION." Yes, that was it, that was all it. She turned at that and passed by auto-security into her personal garage almost the size of an Olympic swimming pool, though somehow no one had thus far looked into the impractibility of such a large quarters, especially from the family that invented the ultamite in storage devices. Quietly she turned off the engine and started for the door to the house, and a shiver went down her spine at the hazy figure at it, until she came closer and realized who it was-- her brother, Trunks, the old businessman with no time for more than the monopoly, the glasses-faced man who hardly took notice now of any blushing glance at him made by several of his female employees.  
  
Trunks, who had gone through the past ten or so years of his life adhering to discipline and the virtues of hard work, plunged himself into the drudgery of paperwork and files and money as if in a last, dying effort to achieve some strange acceptance. His father he had long since given up attempting to please, but his mother had always appreciated his intelligence and his confidence, and Trunks had managed to incorporate them in his run of the business. Dry old Trunks-- Bura suspected the last time he had ever had any resemblence of fun was a few years ago when he'd gone along with Pan and Goku on that insane trip to outer space, in what she considered a vague, weird spoof of a combination of Star Trek and Star Wars, first carnations only. Pan had loved the entirety of the trip, but Bura could see no reason for it-- spaceships were to her figments of sci-fi alone, there was no glamour to going to the final frontier. Bura mulled this over in her head as she walked closer to him.  
  
She had been set on telling her father first, but she supposed Trunks would have found out within a few hours at worst. He waved at her, saying his ordinary, cordial hello, almost interrupted by Bura's anxious, hurried attempt at telling her brother what had happened.  
  
"Trunks! I-- there was this freak. I was in my car, coming back from Pan's house, and he followed me! He was flying; I don't know how in the heck he managed that but he did. He scared me to death, the freak. Finally I had to stop the car because it went into a dead end, and I thought he'd break in there or something, but he didn't. He was such a jerk-- he didn't even tell me why he'd done it! I'll tell Daddy and make sure he and Mom'll report it to the police--"  
  
"Bura."  
  
Bura glanced back at her brother, seeing for the first time the slight sweat on his brow, the look of worry and pain in his light blue eyes. It did not appear to be a physical pain, but a mental one, as though the weary load he carried would never be light, and, worst of all, he knew it. The neat polish of his suit, usually kinder and complementary to the rest of him, today seemed to make him look like an actor miscast for a role yet doing the best that was possible under the harried circumstances, however much he detested it. Bura saw all this but misunderstood and ignored it.  
  
"What? He stalked me and they'll report it! Or if they don't, I will! What is so wrong about that? That guy is going to wish he'd never been born. I--"  
  
"Bura!"  
  
She stared again, shocked by the tone. Trunks never spoke so harshly towards her-- only in his mind would he almost yell at her, would he allow himself to lose his poise and control. Yet it was lost.  
  
"I don't have time for this anymore."  
  
"What do you mean? Of course you've got time-- I'm your sister! Shouldn't you care when your sister gets stalked by some nutcase?"  
  
His tone was hard, almost gritty, like sandpaper from a carpenter's shop.  
  
"Yes, I suppose I should care, and I do. But right now I'm having to deal with the company--"  
  
"That's all you ever deal with! It's always like that!" Bura put a face on as though she truly cared in more than the passing sense how he spent his time, and an idle employee peering out the window might have heard the ruckus and seen the juxtaposition of the siblings-- the heiress, clad in scant, tight burgundy vinyl and a scowl, and the C.E.O. in his beige suit and paisley tie and thick glasses that he had never changed for contacts, the look of anger and disgust obvious on his handsome face.  
  
"Well, Bura, what do you deal with? What do you have to attend to? Absolutely nothing-- you've sat around at home and Mom and Dad have let you, always getting you whatever you want and letting you do whatever you want, like some expensive breed of cat to be pampered and petted. Cats aren't expected to do anything useful. I doubt you could, either. Just party and play your entire life, let yourself look cute and sweet and everyone cares about you. You're the public's idol, the poor little rich girl of this era. But you don't care about anyone, Bura, anyone at all. You're as shallow as pond water. I don't know whether it's because you were spoiled so much as a kid or because you were born into so much money or if you were just born that way. Probably you've always been like that, now more than ever.  
  
"What I was trying to say before you kept butting in was that the company's losing out on a lot of deals-- people are switching out of Capsule Corp., not buying stocks like they used to, going to other businesses for their capsules. We own the idea but that doesn't stop any run-of-the-mill employee from quitting and making his own business with his own capsules. Like Pepsi, made by someone who worked at Coca-Cola. It won't affect us directly, not for awhile at its current pace, but if it continues... the recession's bad enough as it is, but with people going around, making their own capsules and selling them-- I've already had to lay off more than five hundred workers so far this year, me and lower bosses."  
  
He stopped for breath.  
  
'There,' Bura thought, 'he's out of steam, forgotten what he was ranting to me about--' but Trunks continued.  
  
"But you don't mind as long as you're comfortable, right? Don't mind at all. Mom's long since handed everything over to me. I'm keeping it together for her, trying to make sure it lasts for her. Father, too-- he wouldn't care much if Capsule Corp. went to pot if it was just him (he's had worse things happen to him), but he knows it would crush Mom. And you.  
  
"It won't get bad enough that the business will shut itself down, not in Mom's lifetime, anyway, but it might in mine and yours. Less likely things have happened. But here you go while I'm keeping the roof over your head, claiming some guy flew up and chased you while you were trying to get home."  
  
"Trunks--"  
  
"I'll report it to the police," he said as he strode to the door, slamming it as he went inside, leaving Bura knowing why he did not leave it open for her.  
  



End file.
